


Depression nap

by RedChucks



Category: Nathan Barley (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 16:45:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17450651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedChucks/pseuds/RedChucks
Summary: I wrote a new Dan/Jones thing on my mobile.“What...” Claire faltered, sure that somehow her eyes were lying to her. “What are you doing?”Jones looked up from his book, still carding his fingers lazily through Dan’s hair like it was completely ordinary and Claire had seen it a hundred times.“Depression nap,” he said simply, giving a crooked, not quite there, smile in reply to Claire’s scowl and scrunched nose - as if his explanation explained anything at all. “Well, he’s having a depression nap. I’m trying to read this brick cos he read it the other week and I thought it’d be good to, ya know, talk books again,” Jones shrugged, looking down at the novel dubiously, like a toddler looking at a bowl of vegetables. “But it’s well thick and I reckon my brain’s rotted something shocking since uni.”





	Depression nap

“What...” Claire faltered, sure that somehow her eyes were lying to her. “What are you doing?”

Jones looked up from his book, still carding his fingers lazily through Dan’s hair like it was completely ordinary and Claire had seen it a hundred times.  
   
“Depression nap,” he said simply, giving a crooked, not quite there, smile in reply to Claire’s scowl and scrunched nose - as if his explanation explained anything at all. “Well, he’s having a depression nap. I’m trying to read this brick cos he read it the other week and I thought it’d be good to, ya know, talk books again,” Jones shrugged, looking down at the novel dubiously, like a toddler looking at a bowl of vegetables. “But it’s well thick and I reckon my brain’s rotted something shocking since uni.”

Claire blinked in disbelief but Jones just shrugged again, and when she didn’t immediately respond he went back to his book, scowling at the page like he was translating a foreign language and only knew half the words. Claire could understand how he felt. She seemed to have fallen head first in to a foreign language film with only partial subtitles and she couldn’t seem to get her bearings. Such easy affection as she was witnessing wasn’t something one usually saw in the House of Jones.

When she’d first moved in to the House of Jones (after graduating uni and discovering that without student housing or a job she was essentially homeless and skint) Claire had been delighted to be introduced to Jones. Dan had described him as, “my, well, my... he’s my, you know, my... shut up.” and Claire had squealed and hugged him, which he’d hated because they weren’t the sort of siblings to hug or share, and hadn’t talked for two years before Claire had gathered her courage and asked her brother to help her out while she looked for a job and a place of her own. 

It had been disappointing to discover that whatever was going on between her brother and his housemate wasn’t the clear cut and conventional relationship she’d been hoping to see. Mostly they just seemed to orbit each other, moving through the same space without seeming really like a couple at all. Claire had even started to think she’d misinterpreted the situation entirely and that her brother hadn’t come out to her at all until they’d brought her along to a party and then proceeded to ditch her in favour of spending the night getting drunk as skunks and snogging on the sofa in plain view of everyone. And that was how it went on. They’d chat a bit but were mostly silent; they’d hang out together, behave like mates and nothing more until Claire began to doubt her own eyes and mind, and then out of the blue she’d walk in to the lounge room or a party and there they’d be, necking like teenagers. She’d almost gotten used to it, had decided that they weren’t a couple so much as friends with benefits, but lately she’d started to doubt that as well.

The window jump had done it really, and as horrid as the whole affair had been Claire was starting to see some real positives were happening as a result. She had, only that very day, told Barley that even though she was telling him she never wanted to talk or see or interact with him in any way ever again, it didn’t count as breaking up because they had never actually been a couple. It had been intensely gratifying and she’d come home with the intention of telling her brother all about it, knowing it would make him smile, and make him proud of her. Instead she’d come home to the sight of Dan’s head nestled in Jones’ lap and Jones reading an actual book.

It wasn’t the first time she’d walked in on Dan and Jones doing something couply since the window jump. Jones had been beside himself when Claire had told him about it, had burst in to hysterical sobs, reminding Claire, as he so often did, of a small child stuck in a grown up body. He’d demanded to know exactly what had happened and what the doctors were saying about Dan’s injuries but hadn’t wanted to go in to the hospital, had experienced what Claire thought of a tantrum at the very suggestion. Yet he’d been there when Dan returned home and had fussed around making sure he was comfortable with pillows and mugs of tea and pot-noodle and toast.

When Nathan had come sniffing around about a week later Jones had sworn him blue on the front step, using more words than Claire had heard from him in the whole time she’d known him. She’d been silently cheering him but when Jones marched back in to the lounge room fuming mad she hadn’t had a chance to congratulate him because Dan had sat up from the couch, grabbed him by his oversized belt, and dragged him forward until he could press a kiss to Jones’ exposed stomach and nuzzle his face against the wiry black hair there like an oversized cat.

And now Jones was actually patting her brother who seemed to be making the most of having all of his limbs free from plaster by curling himself up on the couch with one hand gripping the denim of Jones’ worn jeans. It was utterly domestic and Claire was actually relieved that Dan was asleep so that he couldn’t see the dopey expression on her face at the sight of them both.

But despite the sweetness of the scene there was sadness in Jones’ eyes that gave Claire pause. They hadn’t had many conversations, not really, even though Claire had been living with him for nearly a year, and the idea that Jones might have been to university, and that he might have met Dan there, had never occurred to her before. She sat down on the coffee table opposite Jones, clasping her hands and leaning forward into what she called her ‘active listening pose’. Jones rarely talked to her so she wasn’t expecting much. He didn’t even talk much to Dan, but he said twice as many words to Dan as he did to anyone else. He’d never said so much to Claire when calm and not on some sort of uppers so she decided that if Jones was in a talkative mood for once she wanted to take advantage of it.

“You and Dan,” she started, trying to keep the conversation light, and not too much like an interview, even though she knew that was what she was doing. “Are you... are you guys...” she paused when she saw Jones hand still in Dan’s hair, his body becoming tense and ready either run or clam up. She changed tack. “How did you two meet exactly?” 

“Well,” Jones considered, his hand back to stroking Dan’s curls, a wistful smile on his lips. “I’ve never had what you might call a proper relationship,” he said with an apologetic look, tilting his head down to so that Claire couldn’t see his face properly. “Me an’ Dan have always just sort of been there for each other, you know what I mean? We were both scared stiff at uni, didn’t know how to talk to anyone...” he bit his lip and Claire caught a glimpse of a brighter smile before he continued, his tone soft and warm as he thought over the old memories. “We got put together for a project... found we could talk to each other. I reckon our tutor was trying to set us up to be honest. And it worked... And then one night,” Jones’ eyes flickered up nervously and Claire tried to give him her most open and understanding smile. She wanted to push him to just tell her but knew that using her professional interviewing persona would work better. She’d been working hard on it, and on not losing her cool, which usually worked when conducting interviews, if not in her regular life, and it certainly seemed to be working on Jones. 

“One night?” she prompted, and Jones ducked his head again, looking down at Dan, asleep in his lap. 

“One night I, sort of, confessed to him that I’d not done, you know, anything really... with anyone. Then he admitted the same. We thought maybe it’d be easier to do all that sort of thing with a friend, yeah? Like, kissing? An’ then everything else. An’ it was nice. It was good. Really good. I sort of fell...”

Claire waited but no more words came and Jones simply sat, mouth open, lost in his thoughts and enormity of the words she knew he wanted to say. It was strange, imagining Jones at university, discussing literature and philosophy with Dan and the rest of his class. Jones was hardly an intellectual, sometimes she wondered if he could even read, but she had to admit that it was an endearing image. But Jones still looked sad, and something was still niggling at her, something she’d noticed or that Jones had said, and she needed to get to the bottom of it. 

“So what happened?” she asked carefully, trying to sound as empathetic as she felt, which wasn’t always easy. “You’re obviously smitten with him, god knows why. So if he was your first everything why aren’t you two in a ‘proper relationship’? What happened?”

Jones didn’t look up. He was too busy gazing at Dan’s relaxed profile, and the way his curls twisted around his ear and the nape of his neck as he slept. And then Claire knew. Their mother had called it the ‘secret sickness’ and she’d heard her grandmother whisper about the dark spirit that had attacked so many of the Ashcrofts over the years. It could never be beaten they’d said, and it ruined lives. As a child Claire had been terrified but when she’d realised as a teenager that the secret sickness was depression she’d only been rather annoyed that no one in her family would talk about it. 

"Depression nap," she whispered. Jones nodded, still without any words, for once not needing them.

Dan had depression. Of course he did, and because he was an Ashcroft - and therefore intensely stubborn and with no true sense of self-worth - he had struggled alone in silence instead of asking for help. And had left Jones (who seemed to have no clue about how other humans worked) confused, lost, and frightened. It all made her want to scream, and to hit their heads together to make them realise that they needed to work together and give themselves a chance to be happy, but she knew she couldn’t. Claire was aware that she was far from being a good example of adulting, and that she did not have her life in order in any way and was therefore in no position to lecture others, but knowing that had never stopped her before.

“If you love him, Jones, you should tell him,” she said earnestly, leaning forward to touch his knee lightly. “You’ve shared all your other firsts, why not this one? Let him be the first person you say ‘I love you’ to. See where it leads you.”

Asserting that Jones had never told anyone he loved them before was a bit of a guess but Claire thought it was a fairly safe one based on what he’d said throughout the conversation. Unlike her brother and his housemate-come-soulmate, Claire knew how to pick up on social cues and to read in to what people said. It wasn’t a leap to imagine that Jones had never had someone to really show his love to, but something she knew about Dan (because sisters know such things) was how much he secretly enjoyed being loved and cared for. 

“Tell Dan you love him, Jones,” she said as she stood up and readjusted her shirt, tugging at the fabric to hide her embarrassment at the sincerity of the moment. “You won’t be disappointed, I promise.”

Claire made her way out to the kitchen and set the kettle to boil, not waiting for a response from Jones who was staring in to space with his mouth open and brow creased in concentration as his hand caressed Dan’s hair. Dan meanwhile tried to remain as still and calm as he could. He’d been awake for several minutes but hadn’t felt able to interrupt the conversation that his sister and his... Jones were having. What he did know was that he owed his sister a hug and Jones... well, Dan reckoned, he owed Jones more than he could put in to words, but he was damned well going to try.


End file.
